I once had a friend who didn’t believe in pirates.

She said, “They’re a conspiracy.”

I said, “why?”

“I’ve never seen one.”

I nodded. I had no idea what she was talking about.

I went to the library and checked out three books about pirates from the non-fiction section. I felt like that really said it all. How could they be made up and be in the non-fiction section?

I thought maybe there would be a hint about the conspiracy in the books. Instead, I found pictures of Anne Bonny and Blackbeard. Well, illustrations. No one had seen them in real life and they were way before photos.

I began to see what my friend meant.

At dinner, I thought I’d introduce the idea casually, see if I could get anything out of my parents.

“So that whole pirate thing is a real laugh” I said in my gown-up-est voice. I may have winked. Not very subtle.

My little brother looked at me like I had opened my mouth and spoken Klingon.

My parents looked at each other for I swear a full minute before giving the shadiest reply ever.

“Mark, are you feeling okay? Is there something wrong with your eye?”

The evidence was mounting. I’d confront my friend in the morning with this update.

***

She was pleased that I had come around to seeing things her way. Maybe we should put together an awareness campaign? We could meet at her house after school?

I arrived armed with my library books. She showed me to her old treehouse. Inside, she had laid out two plain white tee-shirts and some sharpies that she had picked up at the dollar store on the way home. “Skarples” they said, in knock-off lettering.

“I thought we could make shirts”

“What did you have in mind?”

“A crossed-out skull and crossbones?”

“Then people will just think we’re against pirates.”

She looked a little annoyed. “Well okay, what did you have in mind?”

My mind was a blank. I thought of my parents’ furtive glances. The “illustrations” in my book. My friend cocked her head, brushing her bangs away from her perfect eyes.

“How about ‘Cons-Piracy’?”

They twinkled. “Hey that’s really good”

I’m 90 percent sure that I suffered a mini-stroke.

She made me promise to wear mine to school the next day. I was a little nervous about what my brother would say, but he just rolled his eyes.

***

In fact, no one paid any attention to our matching shirts all day. We reconvened at lunch. She declared that the fact that everyone was ignoring our awareness campaign was a further sign that there was something big here. She looked around suspiciously and then leaned in closer, so no one would overhear. I could smell her grapefruit lipgloss. We should stand outside the school afterwards and try to talk to people. I nodded. My tongue felt heavy.

“Did you know most pirate stories come from one account and that was written by someone made up by a fiction writer??”

“Daniel Defoe! Look it up!”

“The British government just made up pirates to scare kids.”

“No one wrote about pirates until after they existed because they never existed.” We pounded the pavement. We were an unstoppable force of truth. Sometimes our hands brushed.

***

A few kids looked interested. We hadn’t figured out what to do next, so we told them to meet us at her treehouse the next afternoon.

But when I got there, Teddy Penny was there too. And he had clearly bought it all and was now selling it back to her. She was leaning on the table, chin propped in her hands, nodding vigorously, her lips slightly parted, her eyes sparkling.

“And that’s how I knew it was a big lie,” he was saying. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it back on two legs, running his hand back through his long hair. “It helps to have an older brother who knows stuff, and can, like, get beers and stuff.” He turned and saw me. “Oh hey, Mark.” She did not take her eyes off him.

I decided pirates were real after all. I threw out my Cons-piracy shirt and asked my mom to drive me to Hot Topic so I could get a shirt with a pirate logo. Maybe seeing me wearing it would sting her the way I felt stung.

***

But that’s when things started to get weird.

I turned up the next day in my Captain Jack shirt. She wasn’t there. Neither was Teddy Penny. I was even more furious. Playing hooky together. Disgusting.

When they didn’t show up the next day, I was a little worried. I asked one of her friends. She said that her AIM had an away message up that said something about the pirates not eating the tourists. Jurassic Park, I said. She shrugged.

***

On Saturday, I thought I’d bike by her house, casually, and see if Teddy Penny’s car was there. I was surprised to see a man in a suit and aviator sunglasses standing around on her porch. I did a second loop of the block and noticed he had a walkie talkie in his belt. My heart was racing. Had he noticed me?

I decided to wait around the corner for a few minutes and then head back the other way, like I was coming back from somewhere. I crouched behind a bush that was losing its leaves. I watched a spider drop down from a curling leaf, dangling while it made a decision about where to spin its web.

I thought enough time had passed.

I went nice and slow, taking everything in. The tan Ford Taurus parked right at the corner, with a couple of people in the front seat reading newspapers. Her parents’ car wasn’t in the driveway. I tried not to look at the man on the porch. A mourning dove cooed.

And then, the squawk of a parrot. I turned toward it instinctively. It….was coming from the Ford Taurus? The people in the front seat turned to look at me. One was wearing an eye patch.

Then the revving of an engine and squawking over a walkie talkie.

I turned my head in time to see aviator glasses heading my way. Before I knew what my legs were doing, I was pumping the bike pedals as hard as I could.

Aviator glasses was running towards me now. I headed straight to him. I could feel my blood pulsing in my ears. Stranger! Danger!

“Where is she?!” I shouted.

He fell over, dodging out of the path of my bike.

I heard a clatter of wood as a peg leg rolled out from grey suit trousers.

As I stared in disbelief, I forgot about the people in the car.

“Alright kid.” Some kind of British accent? “I can see from your shirt that you’re a believer. Why are you going about with these government plants?” He gestured towards her house.

“Government….plants?” Visions of her first day at school this year, the way she sidled up to me in the cafeteria. “You’re saying she was…working for the deep state or something?”

“Aye!” said the one on the ground, as he snapped his leg back into place.

“So, where’s Teddy Penny? He’s not a plant! He’s been here since kindergarten.”

They looked at each other.

“He’s been taken. We were too late.”

“For him,” the one with the eye patch spoke for the first time, “but not for you.”

The squawk of the parrot was followed by its echoed parody, “But not for you!”

I took a deep breath. Pictured the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when I made her laugh. “Well, what can I do?”

All three were standing together now. A captain and his mates. A gentle breeze picked up in the trees. In the Taurus window, I could see the bright colors of the parrot’s plumage as it circled within its faux leather cage.

Peg-leg pulled something out of his pocket, leaned towards me, opened my hand, and pressed into it a cold, round, heavy metal object. As he drew back his hand I could see – it was a compass. An ancient-looking compass, with fancy lettering. I could tell it was expensive just by how much it weighed.

“Tell everyone: Pirates be real. And if ever ye need us, this compass will show you the way.”

“And what about Teddy?”

“That problem is for us now.” The eye-patch saluted. They all turned and squeezed clownishly into the Taurus, trying not to let the parrot escape. Then they left.

***

A few weeks later, a new kid joined school. His family had moved into her house. It was like she’d never been there at all. He didn’t sit near me at lunch, or pay me any attention at all. But I was still suspicious.

So one day, as I happened to be passing his locker, I said in a low voice, “Yo, pirates are a conspiracy.” He looked around, laughed nervously, and shouted across the hall to Tom Whitehead, “Hey, is this that weird kid you were warning me about?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. This one was normal.

————

Bronwen Everill grew up in New Jersey and, after nearly 20 years in the UK, has returned. She missed the Pine Barrens.